“Perhaps he is coming here to see Miss Wanless,” Alice had said to herself. And in the course of that week she found that her surmise¹ was correct. John Rossiter stayed only one night at the parsonage, and then went over to Brook³ Park where lived Sir Walter Wanless and all the Wanlesses. The parson had not so declared when he told Alice that his son was coming, but John himself said on his arrival that this was a special visit made to Brook Park, and not to Beetham. It had been promised for the last three months, though only fixed⁴ lately. He took the trouble to come across to the doctor’s house with the express purpose of explaining the fact. “I suppose you have always been intimate with them,” said Mrs. Dugdale, who was sitting with Alice and a little crowd of the children round them. There was a tone of sarcasm⁵ in the words not at all hidden. “We all know that you are a great deal finer than we mere⁶ village folk. We don’t know the Wanlesses, but of course you do. You’ll find yourself much more at home at Brook Park than you can in such a place as this.” All that, though not spoken, was contained in the tone of the lady’s speech.

“We have always been neighbours,” said John Rossiter.

“Neighbours ten miles off!” said Mrs Dugdale.{334}

“I dare say the Good Samaritan lived thirty miles off,” said Alice.

“I don’t think distance has much to do with it,” said the Major.

“I like my neighbours to be neighbourly. I like Beetham neighbours,” said Mrs. Dugdale. There was a reproach in every word of it. Mrs. Dugdale had heard of Miss Georgiana Wanless, and Major Rossiter knew that she had done so. After her fashion the lady was accusing him for deserting Alice.

Alice understood it also, and yet it behoved her to hold herself well up and be cheerful. “I like Beetham people best myself,” she said, “but then it is because I don’t know any other. I remember going to Brook Park once, when there was a party of children, a hundred years ago, and I thought it quite a paradise. There was a

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